Lucius

Growing up, Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius never really had communities of their own to feel a part of. They had some close friends, but feeling nurtured as young artists didn't come easy. It was only when Holly and Jess met at Boston's Berklee College of Music in 2005 after moving from Cleveland and the San Fernando Valley, respectively, that they finally felt a real sense of community.

Dresses: Palace Costume | Shoes: Zara | Fishnets: Wolford | Jewelry: Sarah Magid

Dresses: Miu Miu | Jackets: models own | Pants on Jess (right): Zara Fishnets on Holly (left): Wolford | Boots: Saint Laurent

Two years after Holly and Jess met, the idea of Lucius began forming. After honing in on where the two were musically, they knew they wanted their music to reflect thoughtfulness and intention.

In 2007, after graduating, Holly and Jess moved to Brooklyn to pursue their musical career. The duo found an old Victorian house in Ditmas Park via Craigslist that was previously a music factory. After seeing that a Steinway grand piano and vintage organs occupied the living room, with more recording studios and pianos from the late 1800s in the basement, they knew they wanted to move in. For several years, when they weren’t working as musicians for hire, they wrote and refined their music in the old Victorian house, and eventually they released their debut album, Songs From the Bromley House, in November 2009.

Although they sang together as a duo for six years, the concept of how they sing (the two-into-one merging style) developed over time as a way to feel for comfortable on stage- more from awkwardness than shyness. The fact that people started commenting on their “two as one” singing style reinforced what they were doing. They’ve always been admirers of artists with a strong visual representation of their music, ones who’ve created an alternate universe for themselves and their audience to be transported to. However, figuring out how to incorporate their own took some time. 2010 was the start of Holly and Jess’ being costumed and styled identically as an extension of the music, which has now become an established attribute.

Holly and Jess assembled a band of friends and neighbors: Danny Molad (Jess’ husband), Peter Lalish, and Andrew Burri (who left the group in September 2016) they released their first LP as a five-piece, Wildewoman in October 2013, following their 2011 EP of the same name.

The following year, they started the list of high-profile appearances and long touring: "Turn It Around" landing a placement in a commercial, and performing at Governors Ball, Lollapalooza, Sasquatch, and Newport Folk. Lucius also sold out a headlining show at the 3,000- capacity Terminal 5 in NYC that December.

Throughout their two and a half years of touring, Holly and Jess went through the struggle of constantly being surrounded all while feeling alone. They dealt with this both individually and together: the two are very different personality types, but since they’ve been friends for fourteen years, they feel that they can speak on each other’s behalf. The place that was home to them, where they first started to take their music seriously, stopped feeling refreshing after they began to compose all their vast emotions into new music. Knowing that this may have been the reason why NYC started to feel a little too intense and why a lot of the tracks off Good Grief are so heavy. They needed space from the sensory overload that was NYC. Later, they did make a conscious decision to make some “light hearted” tracks to give them and the listeners a bit of relief like “Born Again Teen.”

They drove from NYC to California and relentlessly continued to create what would become their sophomore album, Good Grief. A truly bicoastal record; the album’s opener "Madness,” was written in Ditmas Park, whereas the verses of the closing track, "Dusty Trails," were penned in Joshua Tree. Once there they found the ideal LA space that they had left NYC to find; a hilltop house made of reclaimed materials in LA's Montecito Heights where musicians often come in need of a retreat. Although they only went to the West Coast to create their sophomore album, Holly, Jess, and Danny ended up moving there, while Peter still lives in New York when the band isn’t on the road.

Veteran producer Bob Ezrin (Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Kiss) teamed up with Shawn Everett (Weezer, Alabama Shakes) to help the group arrange and record. Although Everett mixed Wildewoman, this was the group’s first time working with him as a producer: he was a friend of Lucius's first, a collaborator later. Good Grief was released on March 11, 2016.

Heather: I want to start from the beginning, what was your childhood like? Was creativity a big part of your childhood in your family?

Jess: Yes. I was sort of a loner and I was really into creating worlds for myself, which is not that different than what we do on stage in the band now, with costumes and visuals. Constantly creating spaces and places for me to sit in, or painting, or with my dolls I would create worlds and houses and I would make courses in my backyard out of brooms and jump over them and pretend I was a horse. Not just one broom, I would find every chair and every stick I could possibly find and I would just gallop away in my backyard. I was constantly wanting to be swept away for some reason. Maybe I was really inspired by theater but also maybe it was a little bit of loneliness and a combination of those two things. Maybe a little bit of a weirdo.

Holly: I was always outside and doing weird things, I guess. My first show and tell, I remember I made this little city for slugs in the Tupperware and it was "Slug World" and I brought it to school. Everybody else brought their Barbie, or the book that they liked and I think some of the kids were horrified that I brought Tupperware slugs, but I thought it was great. Art was always my favorite class. Then I got into music later on, starting with piano and other instruments. Yeah, that was a big part of my life. Music was something that everyone in my family loved and listened to a lot, but everyone was mostly a visual artist.

Jess: Same for me.

Holly: I think that was a big part of both of our upbringings and a big part of the reason why we make that a big focus of our work as well.

Jess: Yeah, and just to paint another landscape, my dad would take me on long car rides and - I'd later learned that Holly did similar things - but my grandparents lived several hours away and we would take these long car rides and that's where he'd introduce me to records that I fell in love with.

That's how I started singing, singing along to Roy Orbison and Linda Ronstadt and Sam Cooke and Etta James. That's how I started to fall in love with music.

Heather: Was there a specific moment when you transitioned from merely enjoying music to thinking more about being a musician?

Jess: I think the creative and the music were always there, from a really young age. When I started writing, I didn't really start seriously writing until I started living with Holly. I would write here and there, or for school projects, always experimenting with different programs in school or going to the library at school. They had a huge music database that we were just constantly exploring and trying to think of ways that I could reinvent something that maybe nobody had done. Then when we sat down together for the first time, I guess Holly had really got half of a song in going to a session and she was like, "You know I was thinking that maybe we could work on something of our own and build up this." Then we just started. It wasn't really a discussion even, I don't think. It just happened. That's really when it was a serious pull for me.

Holly: I think for me it was, I always wanted to perform music. When I decided I wanted to do music I was really interested in performing and performing it in my own way. I also from a very young age loved writing short stories and poems, and it was one of my favorite things to do in school and I competed in school with writing competitions and stuff like that. When I went to college and decided to start taking songwriting classes, I realized, "Oh, these two things that I love so much, I can put them together." It wasn't really until then that it occurred to me to create music. I didn't know how to go about it, even. It turned out it was just a lot of experimenting. Like Jess was saying, I think we learned a lot through working together and experimenting together.

On Jess (left) Dress: Opening Ceremony | Shoes: Saint Laurent | Belt: Top Shop | Jewelry: Sarah Magid

On Holly (right) Top: Zara | Skirt: Asos | Shoes: Saint Laurent | Belt: Stylists own

Jess: Having a safe place where you can make a fool of yourself and not feel weird about it. I think that's everything. Having a community to support you in some way. The community could be one person; it could be a slew of people. Actually I was similar, I didn't really know that about Holly, but I was similar. I was writing. I was always getting accolades. When you get recognized for short stories and picture books and stuff in elementary and middle school. A lot of my pieces, I remember were about creating another world. I remember there was some gifted and talented education program. There were different methods to get into those programs, but I had written this one book about a mouse and the mouse's life. It was very detailed, the drawings were so detailed and I think I was in 5th grade. The story was very complex and she brought it to this school counselor and I got accepted into the program because of that, which was actually a really good time for school at the time.

Holly: It was the same for me. I had taken tests for G/T because Bonnie was in. A lot of the tests, I didn't quite qualify. I ended up writing a short story, I think it was 3rd or 4th grade, about a soldier dying and I wrote this whole paragraph of the anguish he feels and my teacher was like, "Look at this!" Like, not normal. Then they put me in.

Jess: We're discovering things. Maybe it was 3rd or 4th grade I don't remember. My teacher was actually not supportive. She didn't recommend me. For some reason she just did not like me, Mrs. Schur. I still remember her. She was nasty. She was a mean lady. When I got in, I went to tell her, I was so proud. I was like, "Mrs. Schur, my book..." I had really strong spelling, I had college-level spelling as a little 4th grader. I had that going for me but that was it. I got really nervous during tests and then the stories. My mom had collected all the ones that were worth showing the counselor and I'm sure she still has it, too, knowing my mom. I went to Mrs. Schur and I was like, "Mrs. Schur, I got into Gate!" She was like "You did? I didn't recommend you."

Holly: That was like every other teacher. I had a teacher me and my mom called "Mrs. Bitch" all the time. This was in high school because I was having trouble with tests and focusing because I was just bored out of my gourd. She told my mom “sometimes you need to accept that some children just aren't as smart as others."

My mom got up and stormed out. She was like "That's not what a teacher's supposed to ..." You're coming to your teacher about "how can we make this better?”

Jess: Yeah. Yikes.

Holly: Anyway.

Jess: You're getting a real scoop here.

Heather: Oh, man. When you guys met, when you were going to college, was it an instant friendship or did it take a little bit for you guys to connect. I feel like it was pretty instant with the way that you two interact.

Holly: Once we started talking about our upbringings it was very clear that there were similar methods and similar interests and musical loves. Kind of our approach to life. Naturally. We really became close friends through the writing process, through making music. We had a lot of mutual friends but we hadn't become close for whatever reason. Not because any reason in particular other than ...

Jess: Being in the same circle and seeing each other a lot.

Holly: Yeah. Then eventually it was all the time.

Heather: Talking about "Good Grief" I know you two started writing in New York and then you went out to LA to get away from the sensory overload of New York. Did the traveling influence you? Do you think your work would sound the same no matter where you created it?

Jess: I think without even knowing it your surroundings influence your craft. We kind of wrote in so many places. Vermont and in New York, upstate New York but also in Long Island and also in California. I think that we wanted to be in places that took away distractions and were inspiring, were beautiful and comforting and had a cool piano. I don't know, it's hard to say. Our records and our songwriting style is always eclectic and a mixture of so many different worlds and parts and inspirations. I think we're always making songs that sound like we've been traveling or that we've been to other places. I don't think it ever feels like too much of one thing. Does that make sense?

Heather: Yeah, totally. Do you guys write when you're on the road or is it more like you have to sit down and prepare yourself to write a song or an album?

Jess: We usually need a moment to step away from the madness to be able to feel super-inspired, but we're always taking notes. We're working on a film score [the upcoming film 'Band Aid' a directorial debut by Zoe Lister-Jones] on the road right now.

Holly: Yeah. That's some new work for us. We're spending the afternoons and stuff on it. I think for writing our own stuff we're always collecting ideas, like Jess was saying. Hoarding lyrics and thoughts and journal entries, so when we sit down and have a safe space, quiet space, we have a lot of material to sift through and revisit.

Heather: Was the decision process to pick Born Again Teen as the first single an easy choice or did you guys have to sit with the album a while and think about which one to put out first?

Jess: Yeah that was not an easy choice. There was a lot of back and forth. Oddly enough it was one of the first ones that we finished and it was as a result of approaching a lot of heavy material and ideas and not really wanting to go there quite yet because we'd just gotten off the road. So we're like, "This is heavy. Let's do something light and easy, something kind of humorous, just to get back into the groove a little bit. Warm up to things and heal the wound before re-opening it." So we started with that. It is funny that it ended up being the single but I think it was because of that same reason. It was the rebel on the record and the one that was almost the antithesis of everything else. It stuck out, for better or worse. We went for it.

Heather: I think it was a great choice. The music video that went with it, how did that come about? Did you guys come up with the idea?

Holly: No, that was the one time that we have loosened the reins and let somebody else have them. We were talking to him about the video and he was going on and on about this idea and that idea, and he sounded really discombobulated on the phone but he's done such amazing videos and classic videos that we thought "Well, I don't know what this guy's talking about but we're just going to show up and let him direct it."

We literally showed up and were like "Okay, what do we do, where do we go?" It was a really fun experience. He's a wacky guy and he got so many different people together. When we were in the car with the filming us in the backseat, he is the one driving everywhere. The camera guy was in the passenger seat. He's going through alleys and going the wrong way, different roads, illegal things were happening. It was great.

Heather: Did you have a favorite part about the writing or album creation process of "Good Grief"?

Holly: When you finish a song and you have this excitement and you want to hear it over and over again. There's nothing better than that first moment of completion when you feel like "I can't wait for people to hear this." Exploring with the bad in the studio is also really exciting and fun because you see it brought to life in a completely different way, maybe that you never expected to. I don't know there's a greater joy for me than when you first finish a song and feel like "That's it. This is it" and then you want to hear it over and over again. Because it's so new and you're imagining all these possibilities for your little song child.

Heather: When did the title of "Good Grief" come about in the process?

Holly: We didn't want to title it until we knew which songs were going on and we could look at it as a whole and see what it meant exactly all together. We weren't totally sure what was going to go on the record until pretty late in the game. I think at the moment when we pretty much picked what was going to go on there and had that solidified, we stepped back and looked at it and saw that there was this bipolarity to it where there were these really dark and sad, eerie songs and then there was also these super happy, energized, uplifting songs and it was just funny how there were both of those existing so clearly. It made sense because of what we were talking about earlier, which was that one was a Band-aid to the other. It was the yin and the yang and the balance of it, because some of them were so one way we had to have the others in order to level it out for an audience in Park South. We had to tour this record. We're like "We don't want to sing dark, sad songs every night."

It was that idea and what phrase comes with that idea and Jess came to the studio and had suggested that and it seemed to make sense because it was good, and it was grief, and "good grief" together is its own phrase of like, "Ugh, good grief." This selfdeprecating but humorous phrase. That's how we felt at that point in the studio. It was like "God, can we just stop whining now." It encompassed those two things and it ended up being perfect.

Heather: I want to talk about your style because as a photographer I really love when musicians have this secondary creative outlet that helps showcase their music. Where do you guys find your clothes and when you're packing for tour do you pack out certain outfits for a specific date? For an LA show do you pack a certain outfit, bright colors or dark colors? Do you guys play off it like that?

Jess: Sometimes in the show, we're all about movement, but we would bring six outfits on tour and we'd rotate between different outfits. Right now it's just a three-week tour, we just have a couple of outfits that we're rotating between. We have a lot of fun with it and we design and collect a lot of ideas for our outfits and then we have executors who are also incredibly creative and take our ideas and bring them to life. Fort Lonesome, a company out of Austin, Texas has worked with us a bunch and Christian Joy, we got a booklet and he's also worked with us a bunch, and we've been really fortunate and there's a completely different aesthetic but we have a lot of fun with that.

Heather: Amazing. For both of your albums did you want the album art that accompanies your music, to represent the sound and lyrics or did you aim for a visually cool package? A little bit of both?

Jess: Tries to be a representation of the record as a whole, of the record title, or something that feels like the spirit of the whole record. For "Good Grief" it felt like we were trying to find something that could have many meanings. We didn't want it to just be an eye roll. It's dark but it's also romantic. The notion that you're holding onto nothing, or holding onto something that doesn't exist, but also the idea that something's missing. A deep hug, an emotional hug, is so good but can also be the hug of something that you're letting go of.

There's just so many ways to look at it. I think that's beautiful. You leave it up to the audience to decide.

Heather: What is your perspective on how you want to be represented through the group's press photograph?

Holly: We are always aiming to - and I'm not sure we've hit anything on the head yet, even, because everything's always evolving and we're always trying new things. As far as one we did for the last record, we wanted something very stylized to go with the picture as a whole. With the way that we dress for the stage and the way we set up the stage and with the symmetry and the very stark images to go with the starkness of the record and the songs. But with color, as well. I guess that was the thought process behind some of those photos.

Heather: I just have one last question for you two. I know you sort of mentioned it at the beginning, but who have your mentors been along the way?

Holly: We've been really fortunate to work with a lot of amazing artists in the last couple of years. We worked with Jeff Tweedy, we worked with My Morning Jacket. We toured as a band with My Morning Jacket but we've also sung with them, background. We got a chance to sing with Mavis Staples and she's joy personified and the most amazing woman. Most recently we have been working with Roger Waters. It's all been an incredible learning experience to work with these people who have been around the block a hundred times and really know so many things about performing and about music. It's pretty incredible to see it firsthand and take what we can from that. As far as life, I would say our families and our friends, and they've been incredible supportive all along the way. Even with people like Mrs. Schur and Ms. Bitch. We had our parents standing behind us. Then, of course, you have your mentors through recorded music that you fall in love with like everybody does and learn so much from such a small age and those people would be David Bowie and Roy Orbison and the Beatles and all these artists that we learned to sing with through the radio and on records. You take inspiration everywhere you go but we've been really lucky to have all of those people.

Photography done on November 28, 2016 by Lindsey Byrnes | Wardrobe by Francis and Pereira | Hair and makeup by Heather Cvas | Interview done on November 10 by Heather Hawke